The opening to my novel Tiger Hugs satirises the fashion for in media res narrative. In media res is Latin for stuck-in-the-mud. Of course, I know it’s actually Latin for in-the-middle, a place where shadows materialise in no such place, go nowhere and say nothing. It’s just next door to the status quo, and it’s the same old, same old, the place you will always be.

Of course, I don’t believe that for one second. Look at me. Working class, conservative upbringing in the affluent suburbs of south Manchester/Stockport. Mum: teacher. Dad: sales office manager—steel. An educational holy trinity: Peel Moat comp, Stockport tech and Sheffield Poly—BSc Civil Engineering.

My satirical opening conveys the dire situation of shadows stuck in the mud, bereft of ideas with nowhere to go. Through the choice of language, I satirise the dire situation of the whole of literature going round-and-round in circles, a victim of market forces dogma.

Of course, I’m a firm believer that the market is what I create, not what other people say it is.

And to illustrate that, in chapter 2, the style changes . The shackles drop away. The narrative becomes linear and the characters literally take off.

Tiger Hugs is all about optimism, doing your own thing, bucking the trend and defying dogma. Welcome to the Bank of Ideas. It’s analogous to where we are right now in society. There I said the dirty word, society.